Latest posts
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Bugge Wesseltoft: The Pianist Who Reinvented Norwegian Jazz for the Electronic Age
The Chronicle of an Era: The Late-Nineties Nordic Sound Renaissance and the Jazzland Laboratory When Norwegian Jazz Entered the Club There are moments when jazz changes because a musician invents a new harmonic system, introduces an unfamiliar instrument or transforms improvisational technique. Other changes occur because someone notices that the world around jazz has moved—and…
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Stan Tracey: The British Jazz Giant Behind Under Milk Wood
The Sound Britain Nearly Forgot In the history of British jazz, few stories contain a contradiction as extraordinary as that of Stan Tracey. He created one of the defining British jazz albums of the 1960s, accompanied some of the greatest American musicians ever to appear in London, developed a piano language instantly recognizable after only…
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Sheila Majid: Malaysia’s Queen of Jazz-Pop and the Voice Behind Sinaran
Before “Asian Pop” Became a Global Conversation Long before streaming platforms made musical geography almost irrelevant, Sheila Majid built a career that quietly challenged assumptions about where sophisticated pop could come from. Singing primarily in Malay, working with musicians and arrangers from across Southeast Asia, and drawing from jazz, R&B, funk and polished 1980s production,…
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Oscar Peterson: The Piano Virtuoso Who Redefined Jazz Technique
The Problem With Perfection There is a peculiar problem surrounding Oscar Peterson. He was too good. Not literally, of course. No musician possesses too much command of an instrument. But Peterson’s extraordinary technical facility became so central to his public identity that it occasionally obscured everything else. Listeners heard the velocity of his right hand,…
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Mario Bauzá: The Cuban Architect Who Helped Create Afro-Cuban Jazz
Before Latin Jazz Had a Name Some musicians change jazz through the sound of an instrument. Others change it by altering the architecture around everyone else’s sound. Mario Bauzá belonged to the second category. He was an instrumentalist, arranger, composer, musical director and cultural translator whose importance cannot be measured simply by counting famous solos.…
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BADBADNOTGOOD: How a Toronto Band Rewired Jazz for the Hip-Hop Generation
Before the Algorithms Knew What to Call Them BADBADNOTGOOD began with a problem of classification. When Matthew Tavares, Chester Hansen and Alexander Sowinski met while studying jazz at Humber College in Toronto around 2010, they shared the technical vocabulary expected of young jazz musicians, but their listening habits did not respect the boundaries of the…
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Azymuth: How Brazil’s Legendary Trio Reinvented Jazz-Funk and Samba
Before Jazz-Funk Became a Formula There is a temptation, when discussing Azymuth, to describe the group through a sequence of familiar ingredients. Samba. Jazz. Funk. Bossa nova. Electric keyboards. Fusion. Put them together and the description appears complete. But Azymuth’s importance begins precisely where that list becomes inadequate. The Brazilian trio did not simply combine…
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Toshiko Akiyoshi: How a Japanese Jazz Pioneer Reinvented the Big Band
From Postwar Japan to the Jazz Orchestra Long before Toshiko Akiyoshi began transforming the language of the modern jazz orchestra, she faced a more fundamental question: how could a musician enter a tradition created thousands of miles from home and eventually speak through it in a voice unmistakably her own? Her answer would take decades…
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Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos: How Portugal Built a Contemporary Big Band Institution
Building a Jazz Orchestra in Matosinhos A Big Band Built for the Present By the end of the twentieth century, the big band occupied an unusual position in jazz. Its importance to the history of the music was unquestionable, yet the economic and cultural conditions that had once allowed large ensembles to flourish had largely…